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Burying greenhouse gases to slow global warming A. One way to slow global warming is to take the greenhouse gases that cause it and bury them. That is the idea behind projects now under way to capture emissions from power plants and factories and force them underground or deep into the ocean. There, proponents argue, they could be trapped for thousands of years. B. This concept, known as carbon sequestration, is already being used by oil companies to improve the efficiency of oil wells, and now engineers have begun exploring ways to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to reduce their impact on the environment. At a recent conference, delegates from fourteen industrialised and developing countries agreed to engage in cooperative research into capturing and storing carbon dioxide. C. The goal is to stabilise emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Over the past century, airborne carbon dioxide concentrations have risen by nearly a third, according to Scott Klara, sequestration manager at the US National Energy Technology Laboratory. Unless emissions are slashed by two thirds worldwide, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that concentrations will rise to double the levels of the early 1700s, before the Industrial Revolution. These increased levels of carbon-based compounds in the atmosphere are believed to be the cause of rising temperatures and sea levels around the world. Ignoring the problem is therefore not an option. D. Limiting emissions, however, is not an easy undertaking since increased energy consumption…